WASHINGTON (AFP) — A Rwandan academic who was suspended from teaching at a US college for his alleged role in his country's 1994 genocide said Tuesday he was cleared 10 years ago of any links to the slaughter.
Leopold Munyakazi, who has been teaching French at Goucher College in Maryland since September, was suspended Sunday over allegations that he participated in the genocide in Rwanda, in which some 800,000 people were slaughtered, mostly ethnic Tutsis but also moderate Hutus.
"I was surprised by these accusations because in 1999 when I was freed from prison in Rwanda, the prosecutor said he had found nothing against me," Munyakazi told AFP.
"He wouldn't even allow me to have a public trial to prove my innocence. He added three days to my prison sentence when I insisted. So to hear that I've been accused of this so many years later was surprising," he said.
College president Sanford Ungar said in an email to teachers and students Sunday that he made the decision to suspend the teacher after meeting with a US television producer who is working on a series about alleged international war criminals who live in the United States.
The producer and a Rwandan prosecutor who accompanied him said they "had eyewitnesses who claimed Dr Munyakazi participated directly in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, inciting members of the Hutu majority to attack members of the Tutsi minority," Ungar said in an email.
"They shared with me a detailed indictment calling for his arrest," said Ungar, noting that the indictment he saw "was apparently prepared in 2006, 12 years after the events it describes" but just months after Munyakazi had made remarks in the United States that were critical of the Rwandan government.
An official at the Rwandan embassy in Washington who refused to give his name has asked the United States to extradite Munyakazi and "other genocide fugitives who are hiding in this country."
The official also said that Munyakazi had jumped bail and come to the United States -- accusations the professor denied.
"I have documents that say I was freed from prison. In them, there was no mention of bail," Munyakazi said, adding that he came to the United States in 2004, 10 years after the genocide.
Munyakazi, who was brought to Goucher in September last year by the Scholar Rescue Fund, which provides fellowships for scholars whose lives are threatened in their home countries, is seeking political asylum in the United States.
The Scholar Rescue Fund and its parent organization, the Institute of International Education, are investigating the accusations against Munyakazi.
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